From the Bench: Answer to Prep Football Legal Mess was Already in Place in 2012 Ruling Involving BHS
By Jeff Toquinto on December 08, 2024 from Sports Blog
In a perfect world, West Virginia state champions in all four classifications, including Bridgeport vs. Herbert Hoover, would have been crowned in high school football for 2024 this weekend. Ours, as everyone knows, is not a perfect world.
A litigious world? Yes, but far from perfect.
It is the litigation that leads me to this post. Actually, it was a Facebook message exchange with my friend, a West Virginia sports aficionado Alex McLaughlin. When talking about the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals’ ruling that put an end to the injunctions and other legal issues that set up a one-week delay in the postseason, he sent me a key piece of evidence in the ruling.
Alex sent me this piece of information from the Supreme Court of Appeals Decision Notes he found online. It reads as follows:
"We have repeatedly held that the manner in which the WVSSAC applies its rules is not subject to judicial review: “Decisions properly within the purview of the legislative grant of authority to the West Virginia Secondary Schools Activities Commission under West Virginia Code § 18–2–25 (2008), such as the application of WVSSAC Rules . . . are not subject to judicial review.” Syllabus Point 3, State ex rel. West Virginia Secondary School[ ] Activit[ies] Commission v. Webster, 228 W. Va. 75, 717 S.E.2d 859 (2011)."
As soon as I read this, I remembered. I actually should have known this is exactly how it was going to be play out in front of the Supreme Court of Appeals.
The reason? More than 12 years ago, on Sept. 28, 2012, I saw this very decision get handed down and it involved Bridgeport High School and a Bridgeport High School athlete.
Ironically, the decision was not handed down by the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals. Instead, it was handed down in a manner that proved not every circuit judge in the state is simply going to rule in favor of a hometown school because they are an elected official. And I have proof, which goes by the name of the Honorable Judge John Lewis Marks, whose actions on that date showed his “honorable” 
tag is more than merited.
tag is more than merited.
Back on that September day more than a decade ago, then BHS senior (now happily married father and thriving community member) Brent Rhoades, his father Todd, and Bridgeport Attorney Chuck Steele were in the Harrison County Courthouse seeking relief against the WVSSAC.
Everything, however, was not exactly the same. The Rhoades’ family was seeking a temporary restraining order, which is not an injunction, but geared to do the same thing as the injunctions that led to the delay in the state football playoffs.
What was the same in the case is the Marks essentially said the same thing in his ruling that is listed in the Supreme Court of Appeals Decision Notes. Lewis cited a previous Supreme Court of Appeals ruling – not the same one mind you – that spelled out the above situation that it boiled down to.
While the discussion on the issues surrounding the old Rhoades’ case seemed intriguing, in the end nothing was going to change Marks’ ruling on the matter due to a Supreme Court of Appeals case he cited. The case in question involved the November 2010 suspension of four South Charleston football players by the WVSSAC and then the overruling of that suspension by Kanawha County Circuit Judge Carrie Webster.
Eventually, Supreme Court of Appeals Justice Thomas McHugh ruled on Webster’s decision and determined that “rules and the review of calls or rulings made by game officials, are not subject to a judicial review.” Because of that, Marks said he was handcuffed from doing anything.
“I don’t think the law allows me to have a say on how to apply (the WVSSAC’s) rules,” Marks said back in 2012.
The ruling may be apples and oranges, but it is still fruit. And he was saying the court system does not have domain of the application of what the decisions of the WVSSAC are.
I am not here to bash circuit judges. But if there was precedent that Judge John Lewis Marks was easily able to find, and then there was at least one case after that where precedent had been set, were the circumstances that much different this time around that the circuit judges granting injunctions saw something different.
Most of the public opinion I have read on the matter points to what is believed to be fact – that an elected official, which circuit judges are, will never go against a local school because, well, they are an elected official. Marks proved that is not always the case if that is the line of thinking. I am going to give the benefit of the doubt and say that the judge’s intentions in all these cases were honorable.
That said, there was other discussions brought up during this latest litigation fiasco that would make the possibility of a local judge rubber stamping an injunction to behoove the local populace a moot point. I fully support having all future injunctions against the WVSSAC be overseen in Kanawha County – no bias, no connection, just an interpretation of the law as it stands. And if it involves Kanawha County, have a second county or circuit to turn to.
I cannot help but think the West Virginia Legislature, which has been sticking its hands into the state extracurricular pot that impacts the WVSSAC recently with disastrous results, will not attempt to put oversight onto the WVSSAC. They will. Some of it may be merited.
For starters, does the WVSSAC need so many review boards, boards of appeal, board of directors, and probably some I am leaving out?
There does need to be some changes but the folks running the day-to-day operations of the WVSSAC in Parkersburg would work better if left to their own devices or direction from a single oversight board instead of being given ridiculous mandates like the transfer portal to enforce from the West Virginia Legislature.
Changes? Probably not a bad idea. Oversight and control resting in the hands of the West Virginia Legislature? About as bad an idea as you can get.
The worst part, we should not be having this discussion. The answer to the dilemma was out there. We reported on it in 2012.
My apologies for not getting it out there sooner – not that it would have stopped anything. After all, we live in a litigious world.
Editor's Note: Second photo shows Attorney Chuck Steele, Todd Rhoades, and his son Brent, in the courtroom of Judge John Lewis Marks in 2012. Bottom image is of Judge Marks.
